Mysterious credit in my wife's Citibank account

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Hi all. Hope you all can help me with a weird situation with ...

Mysterious credit in my wife's Citibank account
Hi all. Hope you all can help me with a weird situation with Citibank, me and my wife are dealing with.
Today Morning my wife happened to check her Citibank savings account and found that there are 2 different credits from State Bank Of India, Bangalore Branch amounting to Rs 48000. We were quite surprised as we were not expecting this kind of generous donation from anyone. Called up Citibank to check the source of the fund and the representative had no clue where the funds have come from.

My assumption is, wifey was working for an MNC in Hyderabad for 3 years, she quit the organization in 2007 Dec and applied for a complete PF withdrawal some 6 months back. I am assuming that this is her PF savings, but don’t expect the amount to be that high. Also was told that PF takes it own sweet time to be refunded. Approached the payroll desk at the ex-office and even they have no clue regarding the credit.

My question is.. How do I determine the creditor of both these cheque's ? Is it a case of some mistaken identity or a funds transfer issue ? Should we wait to see if the amount is debited back or withdraw the amount before the bank decided to debit it back ?
Please help !!

Similar thing happened to me a few months back. In fact, it is a crazy coincidence - I also have a Citibank account, the amount credited was around Rs. 48K and the money came from SBI Doorvaninagar (if I remember right).

I had left my job a year back and am currently in the UK doing my masters. My PF had already been credited (within two months after I resigned - it gets credited quicker if you tell them you are leaving the country and show them your visa). Anyways, I called Citibank and they told me "it is either PF credit or income tax refund". I hadn't claimed any income tax refunds last year, so it must be some additional component of the PF that wasn't credited earlier.

What everyone is ignoring is the mode of transfer. Is it an ECS transfer or by cheque? If ECS had you given the account details to your previous organisation or PF department?

I doubt its PF, looks like a case of wrong account number (which happens to be your account number) on someone's cheque.

With the stingent restrictions in place to detect illegal money transfers and money laundering, The Bank will have the details of the transfer. The Bank should know where and how the money was transfered. If they say they don't know, that's rubbish.

When your wife filled for the PF amount refund, did she give details of your Citi Bank account for directly crediting the amount to that account? If not, they would not directly credit that amount to your wife's account. You could get the transaction details and call up/email SBI branch and they should be able to give you the details. You can also get those details from the PF office by going there or by filing an application under RTI which should give you all the details you require.

I have had such credits (somebody else's salary) and of course the bank debited that amount a few days later.

Suggesting you to park the fund in your savings account, and not do anything with it.
The same had happened with my colleague's Suvidha account. An amount of Rs.10K got in there, with the debit happening from some town in Andhra Pradesh. The bank couldn't help much with regards to source of the fund. It stayed put that way for about 2 months or so, and was then reverted.
The bank reserves the right to debit back the amount from your account, when the party that deposited it contests on the same. This can be a typo error either by the person that deposited it, or by the banking staff.

With the stingent restrictions in place to detect illegal money transfers and money laundering, The Bank will have the details of the transfer. The Bank should know where and how the money was transfered. If they say they don't know, that's rubbish.

Please check with any other Bank Managers you may know.

+1 to this view

did you check with the citi bank branch where your wife's account is located. they would have all the details of the transactions.
some time if you check in some other branch, they may not have details expect the one entered in the system.